


These Specials Things

by Decibelle, ravyn_ashling



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky collects all the animals and embraces the hermit life, Gentle Journey of Self Discovery, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Post-Civil War (Marvel), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Steve Rogers, Quiet Life, With no actual farming involved, farmer Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 10:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11160303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decibelle/pseuds/Decibelle, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravyn_ashling/pseuds/ravyn_ashling
Summary: Bucky had always thought his options were limited, but when new ones are presented he sees the escape he's always needed. There's a barn, some clingy animals that become family, lots of time in his own head and a future he hadn't anticipated. Many things have changed in a century, but just because they're different now doesn't mean he can't still find some joy. And perhaps if he's lucky, even some love.[This is a submission for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang with artwork by Ravyn_Ashling]





	1. New Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of the Cap Reverse Big Bang and the fic is based off the fantastic art by Ravyn_Ashling who also created an extra piece in return. Big thanks to them for their wonderful inspiration and also to my beta and one woman cheer squad who kept me motivated to get this thing done.

Worry felt like a new sensation. Not the feeling of worrying after others, but the dread of what was to come. Bucky remembered all of his lives, each version of his identity, and the first one (the real one, he tries to remind himself) had so many recollections of that particular emotion. 

It was this feeling that took him on a walking tour of dark alleys searching for smart-mouthed friends every day, the one that got him to stay longer than he needed at that dock job to help out his family, and the very same feeling that had him hoisting a shield on a moving train, to deflect and protect the only person that mattered. 

No, worrying was not a new feeling for Bucky, but the worried glances he was receiving, the worry that he was actually causing felt entirely new.

 

Steve was the most fretful, and that was not surprising. 

Steve hovered, he stared and he guarded. There didn’t seem to be any escape from the stifling concern that followed Bucky from room to room, from his bed to the window to the bathroom and he didn’t need any help in there, at least. 

Physically, he was great, they said. Good as new. The new arm had been fitted while he’d been asleep and he’d been too aware of the pride everyone held over it to feel free to tell them how much he hated that. He wasn’t an experiment, and he’d rather have gone the rest of his life (and having a ‘rest of’ was a new concept too) with one arm and a hindrance to others than to be ‘fighting fit’.  
  
Bucky didn’t want to fight again. Not ever.

The arm was useful and light. He remembered the weight of the old appendage, the way it had pulled taut on all the muscles it had been anchored to and the way it was never quiet. It had constantly whirred and the plates had clicked. 

The new arm was silent. It was light like the shield and the metal slotted together in a way that seemed almost fluid. Almost real, like he was wearing a sleeve over real flesh, except for the fact that it was silver. It was obvious and he had a feeling it was rare, like they might as well have given him a diamond head while they were at it, he felt obvious enough. 

The silence managed to bother him most while also giving the greatest relief.

 

It wasn’t just his arm that was silent now, but his mind also. He hadn’t realised until now just how loud things had been before he had gone into the freezer in the King’s facility. 

It seemed odd to call King T’Challa an ally when not long ago he had planned out thirty-eight ways to neutralise him in a ten-second window while they fought. He could still think of nine ways, but it took him the best part of a minute to get there. They had neutralised the power of the triggers, yes, but it seemed they had done that by subtraction. What did it matter to them if they subtracted anything they didn’t need to, and how could Bucky be sure that addition hadn’t played a part too? What if there were new things in his head that hadn’t been there before?

 

And yet, it still came back to the silence. 

He didn’t talk too much once he’d woken, feeling cold and lost and so very quiet. Steve had talked enough for the both of them at first, then sensed how little the noise had been appreciated so he’d closed his mouth and spoken with touch. He’d insisted on helping Bucky stand when he didn’t need it, bringing him food after he’d already eaten. 

They were little things, gentle things, and yet they felt smothering. 

 

The doctors talked a lot too, of course. They had their ideas and their therapies. They spoke of neural pathways and of reaction times. Bucky hated them. The hate scared him too, for it being one of the first feelings that had come back to him. They had experimented on his mind, tinkered with him, had even added a whole appendage without his consent. 

Steve never asked, either. He just brought things, stood wary, and tried to guess what Bucky needed.

 

As it turned out, T’Challa was the only one who ever asked anything. 

He’d ask whether he was allowed to enter whenever he chose to visit (as if it wasn’t his kingdom, as if he couldn’t do whatever he liked). He asked how Bucky was doing, and even asked beyond that whether it was okay if he inquired about those things. He asked Bucky what he’d like to do, short term, like if he wanted to attempt a game of chess (all digital), and long term, whether he would like a more permanent place to live in Wakanda. Bucky didn’t answer much, but he gave enough of a response to keep T’Challa steady voice, steady presence, around. T’Challa seemed to like to present options, and Bucky wasn’t quite used to that.

 

He was more used to Steve’s methods, of course. 

Steve liked to think he was being open-minded, Bucky could tell. Bucky could also tell how much Steve cared, and how he seemed to believe Bucky was just a damaged version of the man he used to be, rather than someone entirely different. 

Steve seemed to believe that about himself as well, and neither of those things was true. 

Steve was a steady presence too, Bucky guessed, but there was too much history not to be able to see his motives. He wanted them to go back. Maybe he didn’t want to force anything, but sometimes it felt like it all the same.

 

“New York’s great, Buck. It’s, I mean it’s a bit worse for wear, but isn’t everything? After everything that happened a couple years back,” he paused, and Bucky heard the ‘before you’ loud and clear, “I went on this trip. I took this bike, it was uh, from Stark, and I just rode. Straight out west. It was great, the places I saw. Not so different from what I’d pictured from the old days. There were places I’d think you’d like, good places.” 

Steve scratched his neck a lot when he talked, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to talk so long. Bucky didn’t have the heart to stop him most times, when he really wanted to tell him he didn’t want to go back to America. Sure, it was better than Siberia, but it didn’t feel like home anymore. He figured he had two options, to stall in Wakanda or to reluctantly follow Steve back before he was ready.

 

It was, naturally, T’Challa who presented option C.

 

“You don’t have to go back at all, you know,” he had said while Bucky had stared at the cribbage board, metal where it should have been wood. Bucky had looked up, frowning, and his friend (and wasn’t that odd to think?) had raised a hand.

“I do not mean you would stay here. Steve is trying to do what is best for you, but perhaps he does not know. Only you can know, and if you were to decide to take some time to figure out what that is, somewhere away from all of us and our meddling, then I would help you. Choose a place, and I can see you get there safely, and perhaps even convince our friend to give you the space to get settled. You decide, James.”

 

That was new.

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

Having honest choices is more than Bucky could have really dreamed of, and so he does, he dreams. He dreams of a quiet location to match his quiet mind, of solitude far away from Russian or American accents. He doesn’t know why this place appeals to him, but it does, and thus, he goes.

 

He felt the little ball of guilt knot in his stomach for leaving without Steve, but guilt is a feeling he is well acquainted with by now. 

He also knows the hot flush of shame, but it’s complicated, flaring up because he knows that he feels more guilt for causing the look on Steve’s face before it had flipped to stoic resolution when he’d told him he was going alone than he does for every single abominable thing the Soldier did.

 

Romania is different than he remembered it. 

He’d always known there was farmland and rolling hills and rocky outcrops. That was as he expected, but he’s never been out here without the roar of an engine beneath him, or a mission to cloud his vision (even when that mission was simply ‘hide’). There’s a breath to the landscape, a life, which he didn’t expect.

 

There’s noise, too. 

He’d rather pictured the countryside to be as quiet as he is now, but there’s always something. The rush of the breeze past his throat, the bleat of a distant animal, the grass rippling, the trees creaking. 

There is always something, and yet he finds he doesn’t mind it so much. None of these sounds are the monitoring bleeps of technology, the drips of fluids, the clicks and cracks of weapon assembly. 

No, he can handle this.

 

***

 

T'Challa had offered him an apartment, like the one Bucky had occupied before they'd tracked him down, only better. When he'd said he wasn't looking to stay in the city, there had also been the kind offer of helping him to find a property out in the countryside. It was closer to what Bucky felt like he wanted, but he didn't require the help. 

In the end, a jet had dropped him off on the edge of Bucharest, he was given a list of phone numbers (having balked at the idea of being GIVEN a phone that could track him); Steve, the Wakandan embassy in Germany, Sam Wilson, and Natasha Romanov. He'd considered ripping the page in half. What did he need a handful of numbers for?

 

With a backpack, some food, and the details for an account that held an unnecessary amount of money, Bucky walked. 

With his silver arm concealed by a coat and gloves, he did not attract any attention from passing motorists or at the patrons at various truck stops along the road, and yet he still felt like they were staring. 

He'd walked for two days like this, taking breaks when he needed and sleeping rough, before it began to eat at him. He used to be stronger than this, he knew. 

 

The single focus of a mission in his warped brain had allowed him to go for weeks on not enough food, not enough rest. 

He was different now, and while that made his heart sing with relief, it didn't let him go on like he had. Without speaking to anyone in that time, having bought food successfully with a nod and a “Mulțumesc", he had begun to wonder if he was imagining the looks he'd drawn. 

He began to fear that he wasn't as 'fixed' as he'd thought and perhaps he was going crazy.

 

It was this mindset that caused him to veer off the road on the second day and take to the woods. Romania's countryside was lush and moving away from the traffic, the air smelled sweet. With no people for miles, he finally began to relax, even if he now had no idea where he was going. 

Following the road had been more a ruse anyway, pretending he had anywhere to go and comforted by the single path in front of him. Within the trees, he could rarely travel in a straight line and often had to divert when he met a river, clearing, or wildlife. None of these things particularly scared him, but they seemed as good a sign as any to change course. 

 

He imagined for a moment at one jagged rock that caused a fork in his path what his trail would look like on a map. A squiggly line darting about the landscape with no heading. This thought was followed by a surprising jolt of embarrassment. If Steve were watching, would he think he was lost?

 

From then on, he'd done his best to keep heading northeast, avoiding Transylvania (too cliché) and heading instead toward the hills of Moldova. At least it was a destination, of sorts.

 

An actual destination, a true stopping point, didn't present itself until just after midday on Day 4. 

He was approaching Bacau, he knew this, and had crested a hill when he'd spotted it. There were plenty of farm buildings dotted all over the land leading to Moldova, and he'd seen his fair share of them in their various states, plentiful, struggling and abandoned. 

Most of them, however, were new enough to have outbuildings. He couldn't recall having come across any still standing that were of the older style, in which a single barn stood with a loft space above it. No separate house, no storage sheds. It was old, and yet it appeared solid. Holes in the roof in places, a paneless window, but still sturdy.

 

He'd stood staring at it for some time at the top of that hill, watching for signs of life. He had a feeling that it had been empty for quite some time, but he knew better than to just trust hunches.

 He had a flash of an unwelcome memory, of stumbling into a shack on the Alaskan border, over-confident, and had walked in on an old hunter that never should have seen him. Even less of a danger as he was now, that memory left him rigid at the top of the hill for over an hour. While it never got terribly hot in this part of the world, standing in the midday sun without flashes of trees for shade meant that by the time he did approach the structure, the back of his coat was starting to stick to him and he was eager to escape the sun.

 

The barn, if it could be called so much, was certainly old, but as Bucky approached the small ajar door to the side, he could see that it had been cared for to some degree. 

Panels, though old now, were clearly replacements as they stood out a different shade to the originals. The door had been repainted on more than one occasion, with the layers starting to peel back. 

Bucky didn't care if the door was fluorescent pink, the place looked like it had been empty a while, and most importantly, it seemed dry. 

There was even a modern looking water tank to the side of the exterior that was fading in the sun but did not appear to be hooked up to the house, as if the project had been stalled by some outside factor. From the exterior at least there were no signs of damp, which suggested some sort of foundation had been laid.

 

As he pushed open the door, he was immediately greeted with the musty smell of a place left to go stale, and of old straw. 

Light struggled through a grime-covered window on his left, but Bucky didn't need much light to inspect the place. The ground floor was more workspace than residence, as he'd expected. It appeared to have functioned as a stable, with several stalls along one side of the large space, straw still strewn lightly across the floor. 

The other side featured shelf-space and a closed off area perhaps intended for storage, though there was a veranda space beyond it. 

Above, there was a second level with a ladder tipped over to the side of it. Climbing up to a level where there was really only one escape point seemed foolish to the more clinical parts of Bucky's mind, but this new Bucky, the one who had decided on this country in the first place, sought quiet. He might call it a vantage point, but only for the view, not a target.

 

With no trust for the ladder and his weight, he chose to hoist himself onto one of the stall doors and climb up over the ledge that way. 

He had both expected sanctuary and disappointment and found a little of both. 

There were holes in the roof, this he knew, and yet they seemed to let in enough light that the room hadn't succumbed to the damp. They'd need to be patched up before the next rain if the place was to be liveable-

Bucky caught himself mid-thought. 

He had only intended to rest, hadn't he? He eased himself down onto the ground, metal hand creating a thud as it hit the wood, and looked out through the window, across the land and up the hill from which he'd approached. It was stunning. Green, soft, and so blessedly quiet. He allowed his thoughts to wander and knew he wouldn't be continuing his trek. 

No. This would do. This would do nicely.

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

It had been a while since Bucky had anything that could be considered a hobby. When he was younger (when he was _really_ Bucky), he'd always enjoyed science and stories of new inventions so he had gotten a newspaper every Sunday to keep up with the developments. 

This new Bucky was not so fond of science. He did still like knowing how things worked and how they went together so the project of tackling the repairs of the barn seemed acceptable enough. 

The only problem, of course, was not having any tools or supplies with which to begin. He had the funds, sure, but he hated the idea of attracting too much attention by going into a hardware store and buying it out. In the end, he compromised, making the trek across to the edge of the city with a small list in mind of things he couldn't do without.

 

The first hardware store he found, with a sign calling it Batt Bau, was quiet enough. In fact, for the outskirts of a city, everywhere seemed rather quiet. He was left undisturbed as he filled a cart with everything he needed. It was a short list.

 

Hammer

Nails

Tarp

Saw

Lantern

Rope

 

Once he'd paid, he declined the help to load things into the car he did not possess and tied his items up in the tarpaulin to carry them away. 

He did stop in, looking much like a rambling man, to a small convenience store to stock up on overpriced canned foods and some fruit. He had a feeling food would be the greatest annoyance on his quest for isolation. 

He lugged everything easily back home, his gloved hand hanging his pack over one strong shoulder. 

He did not falter.

 

It was early evening by the time he'd returned, with the sun having dipped behind the hill overlooking his new little home to the West. 

The LED lantern quickly came in handy as he climbed up to secure the tarp, for now, over the hole in his roof. 

The fact that he was claiming ownership over it already felt like a revelation to Bucky, who felt uncomfortable even claiming ownership of his own name.

 

Sleep came easy and the hard wooden boards beneath him offered no discomfort. He was no longer sleeping rough, not with a roof over his head and a small storage of food. Tomorrow, he would begin fixing the place up. 

He already had a plan. It felt new, and sweet, to have an objective he'd set for himself, one that would cause no harm. As he drifted off, his mind was awash with dreams, ones that gave him no fears.

 

***

 

One of the pitfalls of Bucky's fear of being discovered in his new little haven was, of course, that he hadn't bought any wood. 

That, he figured, was what the saw was for. Before the sun had even risen he was out over the hill, heading northwest into the closest forest. 

As resilient and resourceful as Bucky believed himself to be, there was more to home renovations than he'd anticipated beyond 'cut wood, attach to house'.

Cutting down a tree was one thing. To him, this was the easy part. There is a difference, he quickly discovered, between planks of wood and a horizontal tree. A saw, on its own, would not do it. 

He managed to create some very awkward boards and forced some nails through to patch the roof, and only slipped the once, putting his foot through another panel and shouting up a storm as he then went on to fix that one too.

 

To say it was frustrating would be an understatement and although Bucky felt the desire to give up, he kept pushing. Three days of this struggle passed before he gave in and went shopping again.

 

He noticed quickly that he would have to be smart about planning his food store, and while he felt he had a mind like a machine, it just seemed to make sense to have a way to keep track of his thoughts and plans. A calendar and a journal were to follow, and he found that the lists helped with his goals. 

He could now plan without relying on the precision of his mind, to know when he'd have to head out to buy food, how much he had in the ways of supplies, and to also track how the repairs were going. 

Rather than trek out to town just for food, he had discovered he could get enough sustenance from the roadside stalls dotted along the countryside, where poor farmers’ wives were too happy to make a sale to give a damn about making small talk. 

He was a man with a plan and one overcast afternoon, he caught himself humming a familiar tune to himself and quickly stopped. It had felt nice for a moment to remember without worrying about what any of it meant or how it would impact anyone else.

 

He had felt, as the weeks went by, that the solitude was good for him, but then he had been expecting it to last. 

It didn't last. 

While he had been careful not to attract any attention from locals, which hadn't been difficult considering how much people in the town seemed to keep to themselves, and with how isolated his little patch of land really was, he had not done anything to keep from getting noticed from any of the wildlife. 

He had shooed a few birds from his loft, sure, but he certainly hadn't thought any mammals were particularly aware of him.

 

When the dog first arrived, in the night no less, Bucky had been horrified to discover that it had gotten inside without him even noticing. 

He'd been gripped with fear, not of the little mutt and its wagging tail in the dim light of his lantern as he’d cast it over the edge of the loft, but of the fact that his first instinct had been to silence it. 

Why? 

As he shakily set down the lantern and peered at the dog in the dark, he knew there was no reason to hurt it, and he wished it no harm, but that first thought was still there. He still felt, more often than he’d like, that the monster still existed.

 

“Liniștește-te,” _be quiet_ , he rasped at the little dog, some kind of terrier, when it yapped happily up at him. His things were secured and there was no way it could get up to him, so he was determined to ignore the little thing in the hopes that it would be gone by the morning. It likely just needed shelter.

 

***

 

The next morning, and he couldn’t be too surprised, the dog was still there. 

In the daylight, he could see that it was white with brown smudges, and definitely a mutt. He’d successfully ignored it until lunch, pretending he didn’t see it underfoot as he worked to build a chair. He’d never made one before, so it was taking far longer than he’d expected, and nothing that resembled safe seating had resulted from his efforts. 

When he stopped to eat, he’d caved and slipped the little dog some food, and that was it. 

He’d gained a companion.

 

It took a couple of days, but eventually he began to talk to the little creature, who he’d taken to calling Pacoste, which meant Nuisance. 

He didn’t feel comfortable speaking English here, even with no people around to hear. It helped, separating it out as much as he could. Bucky, the real one, spoke English and was entirely American. The asset was Russian, with time in Serbia and using language as needed. 

This new Bucky? He could be something else, with little taste of the past. While there was nothing he wanted to remember about the asset, the time before Wakanda and after his escape was not always so fraught. 

As a little reminder, and the only attempt at gardening he felt safe making, he planted himself a plum tree where he could see it from his window.

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

He’d been out at the bottom of the hill, using home-made saw horses to attempt to hand plane his latest cuts down to useable wood, when there was a scuffle in the trees to his left. 

He tensed, glancing to Pacoste who was chewing an offcut to his left. It wasn’t him then. The scuffle continued, and then with a whoomp, a juvenile calf went ahead and crashed onto the ground just past the treeline. Bucky didn’t relax, and Pacoste jumped up and began barking.

 

“Oprestete.” He was fortunate that Pacoste didn’t run off, as he hadn’t really taught him any tricks. Perhaps another day. 

His instinct for the both of them was to keep away and go back to what he was doing. It wasn't as if a cow of that size could offer much meat, and even after all that he'd done, Bucky still blanched at the thought of killing something just so he could eat it. He didn't like the thought of killing anything, for any reason, and yet the instinct always came to light. 

 

He wondered briefly, while still staring at the struggling animal, whether he shared that with the original Bucky, the man he'd been almost a century ago. He would like to think yes, but the sickening reality was that he hadn't minded the thought of killing if it was in the name of a war. He wasn't eager to go, and he'd been terrified and he hadn't wanted to cause pain, and yet the finality of a kill hadn't gotten to him the way it would now when he remembered it all.

 

When the little cow did manage to get to its feet, it didn’t run, but instead began to stagger over to them, snuffling out whines on its approach. 

Bucky watched on, incredulous, and Pacoste let up and bound up to the creature, sniffing around it and all but herding it along its way. The little traitor. 

It seemed ridiculous for a skittish species like that to seek help from any humans, but then perhaps it had been hand-reared. Regardless of its circumstances, the cow was still heading his way, now with a yappy escort. It hitched one hindquarter higher than the other as it walked and it didn’t require genius to see that it was injured. 

Once close enough, Bucky could make out the dark blood dried on its rump. Bucky felt he was both desensitised to blood and very much against seeing it. He didn’t feel sick looking at it, but he also hated himself for not being bothered by its presence, which made him hesitant. Or was that normal?

 

Shaking the thoughts free, he studied the calf and tried to guess its age. He was no expert, but based on how cute its face was with its big doe eyes, it must have been very young. Sure, he’d been an assassin, but he still knew cute.

 

The calf cried out again and Bucky gave in. 

He knelt down and waited, but it was his dog that ran to him first, jumping up on his knee and tried to lick his face. He ignored Pacoste and waited for the calf to reach him. 

He didn’t have a plan, but he did have a little experience patching up the Commandos when needed. As he reached out, he was treated to the memory of Dugan, sporting a cut on his back, and his deep voice booming as he laughed and told Bucky that he ‘sure was some pretty nursemaid’. He smirked a little, but soon stopped. He was not with his buddies. He never would be again, but he still had a problem at hand.

 

By skirting around the animal, he was able to see that it had most likely been caught in a trap. It was that, or a panther had attacked it. The wound was jagged and dragged along the cow’s rump. 

It really did look like claw marks, but he knew that there were plenty of hunting traps about. The only thing that surprised him was that the creature hadn’t stepped on one, but rather looked like it had backed into it.

 

At a loss of how to help, he grabbed his dog and hurried back to the barn. He set Pacoste down and fetched a blanket, which he then used to retrieve the cow and carry it, struggling, back inside. 

If he could do nothing else, he could offer it warmth and shelter.

 

He hadn’t fixed the stall door yet. What need did he have of that? Fresh water had been a greater priority. 

With it stuck open, the calf was technically free to leave, but once back on the ground Bucky watched it settle down in the straw as if resigned to defeat. That or blood loss, of course. 

Using his notepad, he jotted down the details of the wound and inched closer. It probably needed a vet, but he wouldn’t know where to find one. He could hardly carry it into the city.

 

Common sense told him that he’d need to clean the wound, and fortune had it that he now had running water. 

It took some time to be allowed near the cow’s rump, but once he was, he mopped at the wound with an old rag and a bucket. He rubbed gently at the wound. It looked nasty but superficial enough. He covered it with another rag and sat down against the wall to wait.

  


 

The little creature began to heal, and to Bucky’s feigned annoyance, it took a liking to him. 

He hadn’t minded so much when he’d feed it through the night and it would try to shuffle its sizeable body up onto his lap. But once it got back on its feet, he might as well have had two dogs. 

He must have looked ridiculous, walking out of the woods each afternoon with a tree dragging along under one arm, with a yappy dog and a young cow following after him like some ridiculous convoy. 

His only reassurance on that front was that there was no one to see his ragtag bunch, or at least there wasn’t for the first few months.

 

Eleven weeks was all it took to shatter the thought that perhaps he'd be left alone this time. 

He'd been managing just fine, he felt. Pacoste was learning not to chase Toca ( _Bother_ , but also _chop_ or _mince_ ) at every chance he got, and Toca's wound hadn't infected so she was up and moving again enough to antagonise the dog in turn. 

Bucky had fixed the hole in the roof, repaired the door and installed a permanent ladder for his loft. He went shopping for food every couple of weeks and had accrued enough supplies that he could change his clothes every other day. Enough to feel normal. 

He rather felt he could keep this up for some time and was really starting to relax. He felt at home here. He felt unseen here and he loved that. The only ones who really saw him were his companions and they could hardly care less what he called himself or what he'd done in a past life.

 

At the beginning of the eleventh week, he saw him for the first time. 

He'd stepped out of the treeline, Pacoste in tow, and had immediately spotted the figure up on top of the hill. He was standing where Bucky had stood when he'd first laid eyes on this little place that would become home. Although all he appeared as in the light was a black silhouette in the distance, Bucky knew him at first sight. 

That was an outline not easily forgotten. 

He kept his shoulders facing the barnhouse and only chanced glances up at the hillside without moving his head. He wanted to be certain, but some part of him also wanted to pretend he wasn't there. 

Steve was as sneaky as an elephant in tap shoes, and he had been even when he was a waif of a thing. It was amusing, almost, to think that he thought he could watch Bucky, The Asset, without being noticed.

 

He was gone by the time Bucky had washed his face and hands at the tank, and Bucky thought maybe that would be that. He wasn't dead, he wasn't torturing kittens or terrorising the local farmers. 

Perhaps Steve had gotten his fill.

 

A week later, he saw him again. 

Bucky had been at one of the roadside stalls, buying produce from one of the local farmers' wives (the farmers he was studiously _not_ terrorising), and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a motorbike coming down the road. 

He paid quickly, mumbled his thanks (" _Mulțumesc_ ") and walked quickly and decisively off the asphalt and down the embankment to be out of sight by the time it passed.

 

A night later he heard the same rumbling of a motorbike off in the distance, but since his little homestead was so far from the road, he knew immediately it was Steve. 

Poor, ridiculous, lumbering Steve. 

A 1959 Norton could hardly be considered a stealth vehicle. 

Although the spying was irritating to Bucky and his bid for privacy, he went to sleep with a ghost of a smile on his face that night, to dream not of lost days or horrible realities, but of an hippopotamus in all-blacks, attempting to break into a prison block.

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

Even in the weeks where he didn’t see Steve, the man played on Bucky’s mind. It was like having him hovering over his shoulder, a large presence even from this far away. 

He'd gotten used to having his non-human companions. He would speak to them, practicing his Romanian, but he never needed them to talk back. He felt that they, particularly Toca, liked the flow of his words, regardless of what he said. 

He'd decided to build a guardrail for the loft so that he could take Pacoste up there with him at night. He liked the ridiculous little dog's company, and he had been going to great lengths building the safety precaution so he could have someone nearby when he slept. 

He was embarrassed even thinking about the self-indulgence of it all. 

As it stood, Pacoste liked to curl up in the straw and sleep next to the calf. He was mortified to think that, were it logistically possible, he'd probably be hoisting a growing cow up to the loft to snuggle too. He didn't let himself dwell on how much he was coming to need them both.

 

For now, though, he felt if he had Pacoste's tiny little breaths to listen to at night, he would be less likely to spend the dark hours thinking about blond men who were simultaneously herculean and petite. 

They blended together in his head, Steve Before and Steve After, in ways that Bucky couldn't seem to stitch together his own identities. Bucky, The Asset, New Bucky. 

Regardless of size, his memories of Steve were always of a strong man, an invulnerable man. Even when he was hacking up a lung, a small and wiry Steve Rogers would get up and go to work, or sit up by the window, covered in blankets, studiously drawing that week's comic strip.

 

He'd noticed when he'd visited the museum exhibit that there seemed to be the understanding that he and Steve had shared an apartment as bachelors. It had not been the case. 

After Steve's mother had died, Bucky had tried desperately to get him to move in, and when he hadn't, he'd decided to spend all his spare moments either goading Steve out of his mother's place or keeping him company in it. He'd organised dates, trips to Coney Island, made up celebrations in order to get him to the Barnes house, and to the pictures. 

More often than he could really believe, he'd had a bruised and battered Steve Rogers to keep him company. Bruised, battered and oblivious. 

Steve couldn't see just how much time he'd been putting into keeping the man at his side. Really, it should not have been such a shock when, in a moment of weakness before the next lottery numbers were called up, he'd revealed the truth that had been burning away behind his motivation for so many years. 

Getting drafted after the reaction he'd received had almost been a blessing.

 

Those months that followed in the Army had been the closest to how he currently felt, as 'New Bucky'. 

He kept his head down, he didn't talk to people as often as he always used to, and he worked hard. It hadn't been easy, or good, but it was the first he'd really experienced of doing his best just to be a survivor. 

New York in the depression was meant to be tough, but it was nothing like this, with the mud and the aches and the death. He'd just continued on, as best he could, until he was captured.

 

Seeing Steve again, big and imposing in ways he'd never been, could have easily been a hallucination. 

Why would Steve, even with his good heart who had offered him a kind let-down and a parting embrace, ever come back for him? How could he? And yet there he'd been, and for a time, it had been that easy. 

The stakes were higher, but the war, for Bucky, became much easier. It was always just easier to follow Steve than fight him. He was the most stubborn man Bucky had ever met and he would gladly follow him into the fire. 

They even built a team together, and the Howling Commandos quickly became a family, so Steve never told them how Bucky had ruined everything. It was as if they'd started anew, and as tough and as dirty as it had been, it still felt perfect. 

Perfection, of course, could never last.

 

These were the memories that plagued Bucky as he built his guardrail, fixed up his rudimentary shower and bathroom space, and took care of his animals. 

The weeks continued on and the new awareness and life he'd been discovering inside himself had been fading, as if he was being clogged up with cotton wool (or a bold bespoke uniform). He lacked the clarity he had held a tenuous grasp upon, and it brought back the tedium to his days. He was just waiting for the next glimpse now, and he knew it.

 

The visits, if you could call them that, were infrequent yet becoming predictable. 

The motorbike, the silhouette or footprints in the mud tended to appear twelve to fifteen days apart, now that Bucky was counting. It suggested to him that either Steve was planning the trips from some distant location (which afforded Bucky some breathing space in that he was not being spied on at all times), and/or Steve was attempting to be irregular. 

He never had managed that feat, but then Bucky hadn't liked him for his ability to surprise him.

 

Now that they were all he could focus on, Bucky found he was the most clear-headed for two days after an appearance, and for the three days right in the middle of the waiting period. Every other time, he was all but on autopilot.

 

The weather was starting to turn and it became apparent to him that his sapling, though growing nicely as it took root, was not going to produce any plums this year. It served him right. He hadn't done any reading on how to give the thing its best start in life, but at least it hadn't died. 

In fact, in the months he'd been there he'd never once had to face death. 

Although not possessing the strongest gait, Toca had healed up so well she now appeared to be part dog, lumbering after Pacoste and playing with him when the sun shone. He could leave them together and watch them play while he worked, and it was nice to know that the reason that two creatures were healthy and seemingly happy was because he was there to bring them together.

 

With fewer repairs to fill his time, Bucky had taken to walking the woods now that he didn't have a convoy behind him all day long. He'd been able to forage a bit, though not out of necessity, and he'd seen some interesting birds here and there. 

It was peaceful, out in the trees, knowing that no one could see him or cared. 

He'd taken to disabling traps as he found them. Perhaps Romania had a pest problem he didn't know about. Perhaps people were going hungry because he was preventing their hunting. He didn't care. 

It was selfish, for sure, but he didn't want to see any more death. It was also hypocritical, most likely, as he was still eating meat, but he wasn't the one doing the hunting, and he was certain no one was looking to catch cattle in their traps.

 

Wild pigs were the more likely target. On Bucky's walks, he would turn away whenever his nose caught the smell of rotting meat. He wasn't about to deny any hunters a catch when it had already died because if they were desperate enough to want something even after it had died, he was not about to deny anyone in poverty the ability to keep living. 

So yes, he turned away whenever the smell wafted through the trees, and turned forward whenever he heard an animal. There wasn't much out here that could offer any threat to him, and he liked to see what was out there.

 

When he heard a shrieking squeal and smelled the death in the air, he was given pause. 

He didn't want to face a grizzly sight, but as the sounds turned to whimpering, he steeled himself and turned to the sound, tramping through the mulching soil toward it. 

The pig, a gargantuan thing covered in thick, coarse bristles, had most likely suffered as it died in the trap. It turned Bucky's stomach just looking at it, so he didn't let his gaze linger. It wasn't the one making all the noise anyway. 

At the poor creature's feet was perhaps an even more pathetic sight. 

The piglet was soft, tiny, and grieving. It had tried to shuffle up to the adult's face and had failed in rousing its mother. There was blood on its little snout and Bucky, who had quickly been becoming a soft touch, felt his heart ache as he sunk to his knees in the wet soil to wait out its metaphorical tears.

 

When the little piglet had settled enough, by the head of its mother, Bucky had taken off his jacket and deftly scooped it up. He carried it, warm and close, back through the trees and to his home. 

Although of course sparsely furnished, the living space he'd set up for himself near the tiny bathroom space and the hearth around the stove was cozy enough to keep a needy creature warm. 

He traded his jacket out for a blanket and sat down on the floor with it, waiting for some beans to heat up while he watched over his newest companion. He hoped this one liked dogs and confused cows. He didn't even consider him an irritation, like he had his other friends, but since he was secretly a nerd and he enjoyed keeping up a theme, he called him Strica ( _spoil_ or _hurt_ ) just the same.

 

Strica served as enough of a distraction (he required round the clock feeding, Bucky soon discovered) that Bucky didn't even notice he'd had a visitor. 

Usually, he 'appeared' somewhere in view whenever he noticed Steve lurking on foot, pretending not to see him, but at the same time presenting himself for inspection. By ignoring Steve, but getting on with his work, he felt he was signalling "See? Still alive. Not missing any more limbs. See you next time." 

He had not been aware, however, that if he didn't do just that, Steve's curiosity would take over.

 

He'd been feeding Strica with a very badly made formula. It was a terrible oat-y mixture that was very much not milk (Toca wasn't nearly old enough and he didn't know how to broach that kind of change to their friendship anyway), but sort of a syrupy gruel that he'd done his best to put together for him from what he could explain to a woman at one of the stalls. He seemed to eat it up just fine so Bucky kept making it and he would sit by the hearth with a bottle (which he'd specially bought) and think. 

It was nice. It made him feel a little more real. He'd started to raise his head to check the sky out the window, and had stopped short when out of his periphery he realised there was a face peering through at him. A face he'd know anywhere. 

He must have visibly tensed because when he did dare to look, there was no one there, though there was fog on the glass. Heart racing, he knew it couldn't go on like this anymore.

 

He wrote and re-wrote the note repeatedly over the next ten days, obsessing over it as much as he obsessed over the care of his household. There was no way he could find to make it hit the right tone, so in the end, it was very much like his first draft. 

He paired it with the best apple he had of the bunch he'd bought from the stall to the south, and left them together on a fence post he'd stuck into the ground just for the occasion. It was like a letterbox, without the sad reality of building a letter box just for his stalker. 

He left it out and refused to look at it for an entire day, by which time his offering was missing. He hoped it would be the end of this pattern they'd gotten themselves into.

 

_If you’re going to keep stopping by, you might as well come inside._

_It’s polite to bring a housewarming present._

_I still like pie._

_B._

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

Bucky felt he had timed it right. The note and the apple were gone by the next afternoon, and there was no trace of any of it having been eaten by one of his bunch. He’d been seized with panic for having sent out an invitation as soon as he’d spotted its absence and had gone into overdrive trying to get every inch of the interior of his home clean. 

He’d been making it habitable, but when it came to hospitality he’d been happy to get by with the bare essentials. He had one chair, badly made, but refused to make another. He didn’t want Steve to think he was going to any trouble. 

 

He still did his best to make the place spotless. He fixed the tap on the water tank, expecting Steve to come the next day, but he didn’t, so he went on to wash his spare blankets and clothes the day after. Still no Steve. 

Sensing that he had some time to kill (although he knew he could go back to his regularly scheduled life, but also knew he wouldn’t), he went on to take the time to shave, wash the windows, and hang his lantern so it lit as much of the space as possible.

 

By day four of waiting, he was so ashamed of how much care he was taking his broke the front door when he slammed it in a fit. He got to spend the fifth day fixing that. 

He was starting to wonder if he’d imagined it. He was sure it had been Steve. He was still sure, come to point, but now he was worried, along with being embarrassed. He was not having a gentleman caller. His old friend was going to stop by, that’s all.

 

In the end, Steve made him wait an entire week. 

Bucky saw him first thing on a Saturday morning, coming over the hill with his arms clutched still in front of him. Bucky expected pie. He waited inside, refusing to look until he could hear the footsteps, and only then did his approach his door. 

The idea of standing to wait for him, or by making him knock and having to fetch the door seemed laughable, so he opened his front door and went back to what he was doing. Except, he hadn’t been doing anything but fidgeting, so he picked up his kettle and shoved it on the stove to make something to drink.

 

He could feel Steve, the moment he stepped into the doorway, and he fought to keep from tensing. He didn’t want to turn, but he’d also never wanted something more. He stared at the pot, then slowly pivoted to view his guest.

 

“Hey, Bucky.”

 

Steve had no right to be so stunning. As much as he had initially missed the little guy he’d grown up with (though the clean bill of health had him drowning in relief when he’d first heard), there was no getting past how ridiculous and perfect he looked now. 

His haircut was modern, his clothes understated. He was far more clean cut than Bucky looked, with his shaggy hair, old coat and tired eyes. 

Steve looked rested, tidy, and immeasurably open. His eyes were wide and even Bucky, with all his issues, could see the hope radiating from his friend as he stood tall and took one step back from the entry.

 

“You can come in. Steve.” Thank goodness for his animals, or Bucky’s voice might have cracked. 

He tried not to let his face betray a single emotion as Steve took a brief look around, his head immobile as his eyes scanned the space, and stepped inside. 

Bucky had thought he’d been holding a bag in front of him, but when he was no longer in shadow, he realised it was just a blanket. 

That. Did not look like pie. He hadn’t seriously wanted one, but he’d had a feeling Steve wouldn’t come empty-handed and it could be disastrous unless prompted.

 

“What’s that?” He kept his distance, and when the parcel wriggled, Bucky winced. 

“Tell me that’s not a rooster.” Bucky had no need for a clucking, crowing little nightmare, and if Steve had brought himself something like that as a joke, for his farm, then the visit was not going to go well. 

Steve didn’t look ashamed though, he just laughed.

 

“Can you imagine?” He asked, voice still measured and low, but he was relaxing. 

“Like I wanted to start a fight. It’s not a rooster, Buck, although I can’t promise it’s quiet.” He shifted his armload and started pulling gently at the folds of the blanket. 

It turned out the thing hadn’t been completely covered but had rather been attempting to burrow into Steve’s shirt. Thank god it wasn’t a rooster, but Bucky stared at a loss when he realised it was a puppy.

 

Whereas Pacoste was a mutt, this pup was one hundred per cent golden retriever. Not exactly a common breed in Eastern Europe. It was little, but old enough for its eyes to be open and it rolled in Steve’s arms to take in its new surroundings. 

Bucky didn’t want to open his mouth because the only thing he could think to say was that it was perfect. It was… It was rather like Captain America as a dog, all apple pie and righteousness. It was not, fortunately, _Steve_ as a dog. Steve was more pitbull, or terrier.

 

“You got me a dog without asking?” 

It just kind of slipped out when he’d torn his eyes away from the adorable little pup and had spotted the pride on Steve’s face. 

He felt like it was a fair point to make, but went on to immediately feel like scum for being the cause of the way Steve’s face fell and he began to stammer, holding the dog tighter to his chest.

 

“No! Uh, I mean, yes. But you don’t have to keep her. I could keep her. You could just… Pet her? I don’t know, Buck, I’m sorry. I thought you’d like her.” His expression was pained, eyes tight, and he was holding the puppy’s head like he was trying to shield her from bad words. 

Bucky huffed out a sigh and stepped forward, waiting to see if Steve would take one back in turn. When he didn’t, he hurried over and coaxed the puppy out of Steve’s arms.

 

“You’re squishing my dog, Steve. She’s great. I’m sure she’s got better manners’an you, too.” The expression he earned for this, after stunned, was one of the brightest smiles he’d ever seen.

 

His puppy, which he'd decided to call Mere ( _apples_ ), immediately took to him as a new cuddle partner and licked at the underside of his neck. She didn't deserve a bothersome nickname, she hadn't chosen him, someone else had pushed her into his care. 

And besides, she was sweet as apple pie. It fit.

 

Steve was still staring at him. He wasn't smiling, not actually, but his eyes were wide and his cheeks were flushed, and even decades away from a time where he could read the man like his own face, he could see the joy and pride he was exuding, whereas others might have missed it.

 

"You can sit," Bucky said, feeling at a loss with this giant happy man filling up his small space with his shoulders and his feelings. 

Steve immediately turned, looking for a place, and took two strides through to Bucky's single chair. He sat, and turned to face Bucky, but he said nothing. It had been so long since he'd had a guest who could talk back, even if this one wasn't at present, that he floundered. 

He turned with Mere in his arms and took her over to the stall where Strica was living and settled her down in her mess of blankets. He seemed to be buying more every time he strayed to the city. He had the fleeting thought that perhaps he should learn to knit. He shook it loose and settled Mere down on the floor, holding onto her enough so she couldn't overwhelm the piglet. 

He stayed there far longer than he needed to, avoiding Steve and his ridiculous soft looks.

 


	2. Home

Steve stayed. 

It wasn't a surprise to find him still there, back straight in the same chair where Bucky had left him, even though he'd neglected his guest for half an hour with his new pet. 

He hadn't cooed over Mere. It seemed embarrassing to do that with an audience, but he had fed Strica and sat with them for a little while. It seemed Pacoste had taken over hosting duties in his absence anyway and had been jumping around his feet. 

No, the real surprise came when Steve continued to stay. 

He seemed to be doing his best to remain unobtrusive, and he didn't ask many questions as Bucky pottered about and awkwardly tried to act like this wasn't at all odd. 

He made him tea, for lack of anything else, and Steve thanked him for the apple. He'd gawked and looked at the cup he'd just placed in Steve's hand.

 

"It's tea. The plain kind." He sniffed his mug, at a loss, and felt oddly off balance until Steve righted things by becoming more awkward in turn.

 

"The one you left on the post. With your invitation. It was great. It seemed like. I don't know, a joke, maybe? Or-" He started, seeing Bucky's face twisting in more confusion as he tried to put the pieces together fast enough.

 

"Or it wasn't. That's okay too. It was still a nice gesture, anyway. So. Thank you." He ended heavily, eyes cast above Bucky's head at the loft ceiling. Perhaps it was meant to be placating, but it wasn't.

 

"Ask me what I named the dog," Bucky blurted out before he could rethink it. Their names were private, but then, what did it really matter? Who would Steve tell? 

Steve looked down at the mutt leaning against his knee with his front paws.

 

"What, this one?" He asked.

 

"No. That's Pacoste. The one you brought. Ask me what I named her." He was not going to chicken out. He could do this. He could get a laugh or a smile out of Steve without feeling sick and out of place. He hoped.

 

"Okay. What did you name her, Buck?"

 

"Mere." Of course, it fell flat. Why would Steve speak any Romanian? Bucky had assumed perhaps he would, to be getting around the countryside every other week, but then again he was Captain America. What need did he have with talking to the locals? Captain America never asked for directions.

 

Steve frowned, for a beat, and Bucky realised that Mere was not too far from merde, a word all the commandos knew, but was out of place in this country. 

Bucky watched on as Steve pulled out his phone and typed it in. He could have just asked, of course, but Bucky both loved and hated that he didn't. He didn't want to have to answer any more questions than he had to, but he deeply disliked the thought that his location was now trackable, through Steve. He didn't know what Steve's situation was anymore, but he knew that tech often meant being accessible. 

Steve continued to stare fixedly at his screen, and after a moment he cracked into a sharp, surprised laugh.

 

"Apples. I love it. But you named the other dog Nuisance? I bet he isn't. Seems like a good boy." He reached down to pet the dog, and that was when Bucky realised Steve had yet to engage with the dog as far as he'd seen. He'd been allowing him to stay but hadn't been petting. 

It seemed odd, like the way he was holding himself so stiffly. He was every bit as uncomfortable as Bucky, he realised, trying to not be a nuisance or a bother or an irritation. But Bucky had named his animals after those things, and that apparently was causing him to relax. 

Perhaps he should rename Steve 'impostură' ( _imposition_ , also meaning _humbug_ ) just to be done with it and let him feel welcome.

 

"Good boys can also be nuisances," Bucky offered after pondering this thought for a moment too long. 

He wasn't used to this back and forth. He hadn't been even last year when he'd fought by Steve's side. 

He let Steve do most of the talking when he could. He didn't seem to be getting away with it as much this time. 

They were on his turf now. He was supposed to be the host. He grimaced, not knowing what to ask, not knowing what he wanted to know. 

He was feeling his heart race, the floundering, drowning sensation rising up in his throat once more when Steve once again stepped in. He was seated, while Bucky stood by the stove, but Steve still seemed to hold all the power in the room. He was only offering Bucky the chance to pretend he was in control. It was a kindness.

 

"The place looks great. How have you been? You look good."

 

Bucky looked away. So now he looked good, huh? Isolation suited him. He was sleeping, for the most part. He was healthy, clean-faced and strong, but even if he'd been in a war zone, thanks to his uninvited enhancements, he still would have been healthy and strong, just smelling worse. 

He ducked his head thinking about how he'd bought soap for this encounter. Steve didn't mean anything by it. He probably just meant Bucky didn't look like he'd self-destructed alone out in the world. He hadn't the last time, either, he felt like reminding Steve. 

He'd been doing just fine in his apartment before they'd come for him. He was capable of being left to his own devices. Last time he hadn't even had Steve's lurking to keep him in line and it had been all fine.

 

He gestured awkwardly to the room with his gloved hand, then pulled it into his lap to remove it. He mostly only kept it covered while at home out of a mixture of contempt for the machinery at his side, and even though it didn't feature the interlocking plates of the last one, he had this fear of catching it on the animals. As if a glove barrier would somehow prevent him from hurting them, or from them judging him.

 

"I'm fine, Steve. It's been fine. Why have you been- Or. No. What have you been doing?" 

He didn't really want to know why Steve had been checking up on him when it came down to it. He could make guesses, and most were just being friendly, but he didn't want to have anything proven or laid out for him.

 

This was not a great question, as it turned out. 

He'd been expecting, well, he'd been expecting an answer in general. To hear that Steve was working for some organisation cleaning up global messes, or fighting on his own (although hopefully with his friends Sam and Natasha and the rest), or that he'd taken up knitting. He did not expect Steve to launch to his feet and hurry over to the stall before he'd even gotten through a response.

 

"Nothing, Bucky. So you've got other animals, right? I saw- I mean, I think I heard them coming in."

 

Bucky was too stunned by the evasiveness to call Steve out on his lie. If he really thought Bucky hadn't noticed all his lurking then he was denser than he first appeared. 

What had Steve been up to that he couldn't even give Bucky a halfway convincing lie about it?

 

"Um. Yeah. There's the cow. Toca. She's getting big. And Strica is new. I mean, really new. I've been trying to feed him up since I found his mother caught in a trap. I think he's doing okay. There's really not that many. Whoever's hunting around here is a moron."

 

Steve had walked past where Strica and Mere were sniffing around each other, to stand by the barn door and stare out at where Toca was grazing nearby. She'd become confident enough to no longer follow Bucky or Pacoste everywhere, but she never strayed far.

 

"Was she caught in a trap too?" Steve asked, and Bucky guessed he wasn't too stupid then. 

Toca was getting stronger, which was a great relief, but she was always going to have those ugly scars running rivers and currents along her back where the teeth had sunk in. It had all healed over into scar tissue and it was lucky not to have gotten infected, but it was easily visible from all angles.

 

"Yeah, I don't know what else would have done that. She was still bleeding when she showed up." 

It felt odd, telling these stories, but it was nice. When was the last time he'd had a true story to share that didn't end in loss?

 

Steve took a step back from the door with a deep breath and it became clear he'd needed the air and hadn't necessarily wanted to chat about Bucky's animal care clinic. 

He felt himself flush and he turned away, stepping over Pacoste to go back to his tea. He sat down in the chair this time and did his level best not to hunch in on himself.

 

"So they adopt you, not the other way around," Steve mused from the other side of the room. He didn't come back over though, just climbed over the stall door and sat down somewhere in the hay with Bucky's youngest charges.

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

“So.”

 

Bucky doesn’t really know what to say beyond that, and he’s said the word four times already that evening and every time Steve has ignored him or pretended he’s not referring to the fact that it’s been dark for hours and Steve is still in his house. 

He’d been trying to give him an out all evening, expecting Steve to walk back up the hill and take his bike away. He had intended to let him visit again, but he can’t have ‘again’ until Steve would leave in the first place.

 

Steve looked up from where he’d been sitting with Mere sleeping on his lap and smiled at Bucky, looking healthy and glowing with the light from the stove. He looked brighter than he did when he arrived, but it could be that his mouth wasn’t used the shape of a smile anymore. 

It was true for Bucky too. As much as he felt a contentment living out here with his creatures, he didn’t really smile much. His animals wouldn’t know what a smile meant anyway, he’s sure. He showed love to them differently.

 

“So?” Steve repeated, with an innocence that made Bucky certain he was putting it on. Bucky knew now was the moment to tell Steve to leave. He didn’t have a second bed or even much of one in the first place. 

Other than that, though, he had to admit he was well equipped. Thanks to spreading out his grocery requirements, he had plenty of food and because of all the animals, he’s stocked on blankets and he kept the entire place warm through the night, though inevitably quite a bit of heat would have leaked out by morning. He could, potentially, have an overnight guest. 

 

He stared blankly back at Steve, though his eyes flick to his strong shoulders. It hasn’t really been very long since they last slept in the same space, and they’d been on the run then. 

He wasn’t thinking about the last time they’d shared sleeping quarters in this century, though. 

He was thinking about peering over the edge of his bed in the middle of the night to see his lithe, little friend staring back at him from the floor. The friend who should have been more than a friend for the number of times Bucky had invited him up to the warmer bed. 

That had been a different Bucky and a different Steve. He didn’t think he had the heart or courage to try to recover that same relationship. That was both too much and not enough and set his heart alight.

 

Steve was starting to look concerned for the silence, and he turned his head away. Bucky winced and looked to his knees, for once unoccupied by pets, and huffed out a breath.

 

“If you’re not leaving, you should do the dishes. It’s polite.” Bucky had already fed him twice, although he’d certainly failed to entertain. 

They’d spent most of their day apart, picking an animal to hang out with instead, but he’d caught Steve staring at him on more than one occasion.

 

“I can go,” Steve promised, voice sullen. 

He started to draw himself up to his feet, taking up too much space even with his shoulders hunched. Bucky knew he’d come back, but how was he going to say no? He had a thing now for taking in the pathetic and cute.

 

“Dishes, Steve.” 

Bucky frowned and gestured to the small sink that did triple-duty as his laundry, kitchen and bathroom tap. 

He stood, but turned away to check everyone else was tucked in and dozing, before dragging himself up the ladder to the loft. He’d already tidied it, but with Steve suddenly clunking Bucky’s few plates and cups around, he nervously picked at the blankets and moved them about. He should have brushed his teeth, but he didn’t want to go back down the ladder. He refused to admit to having forgotten anything.

 

Like his dog.

 

He clenched his fists as he peered down from the loft at the scene below. He usually carried Pacoste up there with him, and perhaps Mere would like that too, but they were curled up together on Bucky’s jacket by the hearth. 

Steve was facing the sink and the small window, looking rather at home as he cleaned up. Steve had been putting on big smiles and giving Bucky wide-eyed looks all day, but he hadn’t actually seemed all that at ease. 

Now his shoulders were more relaxed and he looked less a soldier and more a man. Bucky was still staring, face visible from above, when Steve put down the last cup and turned to the ladder.

 

Fuck. He ducked back out of view and scrambled back toward the wall, picking up his notebook and pretending to read. 

A few more minutes passed before Steve’s head appeared where Bucky had just been caught lurking. Steve studied Bucky’s space, the handmade railings, the blanket for Pacoste and the mess of bedding for himself (now neater than usual). 

Bucky watched him out of his peripheral vision as Steve finished the climb and knelt by the ladder. There was nothing untoward about sharing a makeshift mattress, or so Bucky liked to believe.

 

“Am I in that notebook too?” Steve asked gently, and Bucky gave him a look for daring to bring up the one that Bucky had lost when they’d last met up.

 

“No,” he replied quickly. “This one’s good.” He looked back down at the page, which detailed his plan to grow plum trees all along the perimeter, with a little drawing of one in the bottom corner and his face flushed. Hardly exciting spy stuff anymore.

 

He closed the book on his thumb and clambered under his blanket, rolling back over so he was facing away from the rest of the bed. He flicked the book back open to a page that had the smallest handwriting and pretended to read it in an effort to make the whole thing feel less awkward. 

Perhaps if they’d talked about it instead of mostly not, it wouldn’t be awkward in the first place.

 

When Steve settled in behind him, shoes somewhere over by the railing, he allowed several minutes to pass, long enough that Bucky assumed the man was trying to sleep but hadn’t achieved it yet. He knew what Steve sounded like when he slept, both in this century and the last.

 

“I’m glad you’re doing so great, Buck,” Steve whispered, close enough that Bucky felt a huff of air by his collar. 

“I missed you.” Bucky closed his eyes. 

He was wrong. It was better that they didn’t talk about it.

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

They continued to not talk about it well into the next week. Steve stayed, and Bucky let him. 

He hated to think it, but it was true that it just felt too awkward to ask him to leave at this point. It was… Actually pretty okay. 

They didn’t talk much, although Steve got more chatty in the evenings when they were holed up inside. It potentially had to do with the difficulty in getting away from him at night. Steve seemed to want to reminisce even though it made Bucky want to crawl out of his skin sometimes, and if Steve tried it while they were outside, like when he helped Bucky with his new idea to add a pen to the back of the building, Bucky had a habit of simply walking away. 

Storming off wasn’t the most productive way to deal with Steve, but Bucky was stubborn too. Steve wanted to talk and Bucky didn’t. 

At night, though, when they’d worn themselves out just enough to feel loose-limbed, and they’d eaten something hearty, mostly stew, it was a little easier. 

Steve would pick a memory, most often from Brooklyn, and he’d quietly tell the story as if to a stranger. Occasionally, Bucky would laugh, or interject with his own memory, and it would make Steve’s eyes flash with a brightness that left Bucky both too embarrassed and pleased to reply.

 

It started to feel normal. Steve was just another being he’d taken in and it felt nice to have someone talk back to him, even if what he got a lot of the time was pure snark. He liked that too. 

He often thought Pacoste or Toca would try to sass him with their unimpressed little noises, but it was nice sometimes to just have sarcasm thrown at him instead. 

It also made him realise he’d stopped speaking much Romanian and was defaulting to English even when he was talking to his animals. It took some effort to remember that any commands he’d taught weren’t being heeded because the language had changed. He needed bi-lingual pets.

 

Even though Bucky didn’t always appreciate the trips down memory lane, everything felt nice. There was a peace that came with knowing that even when Bucky stomped off, Steve would still be there when he got back and he wasn’t required to apologise for reaching his limit of nostalgia. 

There were extra hands to help keep the animals fed, few though there were, and the pen was coming together quickly. Everything seemed to be flourishing.

 

Except for Strica.

 

Bucky was still feeding Strica by hand where he could, and while the piglet was clearly bigger than when he arrived, he was not strong. He wouldn’t leave his little bed much, and he had no interest in Toca and her big hooves or Pacoste’s eager attentions. Mere was a calmer companion, and the only one besides Bucky who didn’t have Strica squirming away, but he wasn’t social. 

He didn’t make much noise either, though Bucky hardly expected a real life pig to oink. He had a vague feeling that might only apply to cartoon pigs. S

trica tended to stay put and Bucky didn’t know how to temper the spike of worry he felt every time he returned home to find him in exactly the same spot where he’d left him.

 

Steve seemed to be taking this all in his stride and he didn't say anything about the way Bucky would fret over his piglet and spend far too much time with his knees crossed in the dusty stall, trying to entice Strica to play with him and chase his hands like a kitten. 

Bucky wasn't ready to hear a word about it anyway. He hadn't taken long to discover he'd face any embarrassment for their sake, whether it was the odd looks as he asked to pay for any scraps at the roadside stalls, or Steve's indulgent smile as he passed a mug of tea over the half door to him. It might have given him a little flutter in his gut every time he saw that particular expression, but it did nothing to help his worry as his youngest creature failed to prosper. 

The only upshot to it all for Strica was that with Steve around to help out with the other animals, Bucky could offer the focused care that he'd lacked before.

 

For all the time he spent with his piglet now, Steve still found time to try to gently nudge Bucky into conversations. He'd added to it when nostalgia wasn't working, and he'd bring up a memory and follow it up with a plan. 

Bucky had never really witnessed him planning before. 

For someone whose alter ego was the star-spangled man with a plan, he knew Steve Rogers loved to wing it. 

Bucky was always the one planning things, from double dates to attack strategies (although never in the same evening). It put him off kilter to have Steve suggest a different time for trips into town, or add to Bucky's lists of supplies. The self-insertion into his life should have irritated him more, he felt, but he was starting to actually enjoy the company, after a fashion.

 

He could see how dangerous it was, getting used to Steve like this, cooking him breakfast, helping him with his projects, and sacking out beside him at night. While his fluttery heart might have hoped for some accidental spooning to occur, he and Steve kept to their respective sides of his mattress. 

Gone were the days where they need to keep close in the cold. Bucky had insulated his home well and they were both military-grade furnaces these days. 

He caught himself looking now too. Steve was always there, a solid presence that his eyes slid to across the fields and in the stovelight. The more humiliating moments were when he'd look and Steve was staring back. It happened more than he cared to think about.

 

It had happened again, after dinner when they'd been sitting in silence in whatever soft places they could find downstairs. Steve had a blanket over his lap and Bucky had the feeling it was more to be cozy than for any need for warmth. Bucky been sitting against the wall by the side door, using his own flannels for cushioning, when he'd felt the familiar pull in his gut to raise his eyes and check on Steve. 

He had his tablet on his lap, one of a number of items that he appeared to be squirrelling in during the rare instances where Bucky wasn't monitoring him like a lovesick fool. The tablet was sitting flat on his thighs, and Steve had been staring back at Bucky with an expression he recognised, terrifyingly, as fondness. Steve cleared his throat.

 

"Remember how we always used to talk about seeing more of the city, to take a week and just explore, but money was always tight and we'd end up just agreeing that Brooklyn was the best so why bother? I was thinking, now that we can, we could see more of... Places. I mean, what's Slovenia like? I'd never even heard of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I wonder what's there. What's Latvia like, you know? We should be able to see these things, whenever we want. So. Yeah."

 

For all the statement sounded rehearsed, he finished off weakly, possibly because of the odd look Bucky had been giving him, face flushed but brows pulled together in concern. 

Why would he leave this place? He'd seen the world and it was awful. He'd found himself somewhere he liked, somewhere he didn't constantly feel he had to look over his shoulder, and he had his animals to think of. 

He wanted to say all this, but he didn't want to discourage Steve too much. He didn't want Steve to feel that _he_ couldn't go see the world. Bucky had found his little place and he liked it just fine. In the end, it seemed easier just to scoff and joke.

 

"Romania is the best." It earned a laugh from Steve, and he dropped the subject. For two hours.

 

He'd thought they had an unwritten rule. He thought they knew not to try to talk while sharing the bed as Bucky had chosen to never reply. It was too intimate. It was definitely too intimate when he felt Steve exhale by his ear in the night in the midst of clearing his throat.

 

"If you don't want to deal with Europe, that's okay," he'd begun, voice hushed at a whisper, likely to keep from waking the animals than to keep things as delicate as they felt. 

It felt like Steve was sharing a secret, or like they were lovers, and it had Bucky flushing with the shame of the thought. He rolled over in two jerky movements and settled in silence with his back to Steve. 

He didn't think he could handle this, this gentleness. Turning his back had to have sent a clear enough message, at least for most people. Steve, always stubborn, instead took this as a cue to reach out. His palm came to rest on Bucky's arm (the real one), and he squeezed gently through Bucky's sleeve. He tried not to tense.

 

"If you don't want to deal with Europe with me, that's okay too. If it's not me, then... Buck, I want this. I want us to figure this stuff out together. Everything's different, and a lot of it's for the worse but some of it is so much better. I've seen it. You deserve to see it too, the way things have changed. If not Europe, and back home's out, then what about somewhere different? Australia could be nice, and no one would think to look for us. Just- think about it?" 

He stopped there, sounding frustrated, and his fingers flexed against Bucky's sleeve. Bucky couldn't bring himself to move, to shove off the hand, so he laid still instead and closed his eyes.

 

He waited some minutes before the words couldn't fester away inside him any longer.

 

"What's wrong with here?" It came out rough, strained, and he too didn't let himself get above a whisper even facing away from Steve. He knew he'd hear it. He had hoped for Steve to be asleep, or ignoring him, but instead, he earned a sigh, and the hand withdrew back to the other side of the bed.

 

"Nothing, Buck. Here's good." It sounded bitter, and Bucky squeezed his eyes shut tighter, intent on sleeping so he wouldn't have to think about this anymore. About leaving. How could he possibly leave now?

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

Although Steve seemed grumpy, he didn't completely close off from Bucky as he'd been expecting him to do. Bucky was the shut-in, and he kept looking for signs that Steve was bored. He seemed a little restless at times, but it didn't appear to be anything that wasn't fixed by him disappearing for a run. 

He always came back, a couple of hours later, with something in tow. Sometimes it was food, more often it was a bag of clothes that he was obviously getting from his own wardrobe, though Bucky couldn't speculate on whether he was having things shipped in or whether he'd been living close at hand all along. 

The thought chafed as much as it pleased him. He always returned with more Steveness. Once there had even been a blanket brought, soft and far less utilitarian than the ones Bucky was getting from supply stores. He found it spread out over their bed, and he could have sworn that their mattress was more comfortable than it used to be.

 

"Don't think I can't see what you're doing," he'd teased on one occasion, where Steve had returned empty-handed but with a beanie he had not left wearing. Steve kept adding more of himself to the household, and it was getting harder and harder to mind. The comment hadn't garnered a reply, but Steve had grinned at him, and a moment later the beanie had been moved to Bucky's head, tugged down over his eyes so he'd been incapacitated long enough that Steve could get away. 

As he ripped the beanie off, he could hear laughter and saw a flash of movement as Steve zipped around the corner out of sight. They still had their moments. Bucky wasn't sure if that made it better or worse when the funk would inevitably return.

 

Admittedly, Bucky tended to be the one causing the bad moods. 

Restlessness was one thing, but Steve never got crabby until Bucky caused it, by snapping or withdrawing and refusing to speak for hours at a time. He liked to blame Steve for this anyway because if Steve didn't continue to ask him about Bucky's plans, as if what he was doing wasn't good enough long term, then Bucky would have no reason to snap. 

He liked to think that was true anyway. Sometimes, Bucky was just being an asshole.

 

Strica was not improving, and sometimes Bucky took his fear and frustration over it out on Steve through sharp comments about perceived slights, or by forgetting to get him his own tea or, on one occasion, ripping the blankets over to his side of the bed. Steve let him keep them and seemed to sleep soundly while Bucky fumed and cooked inside his cocoon. 

He didn't know how to make Strica better, or how to make himself feel better. 

He didn't know how to be a better host and, most importantly, he couldn't figure out how to make Steve want to stay. Permanently, that is. And for it to be enough for them both. Enough for Steve, and his longing to travel, and enough for Bucky, with his longing of a supremely different nature.

 

It wasn’t like Steve ever complained. He talked about his plans as if they were dreams, as if they were dreams Bucky could share if he wanted, and that made it harder to tell him to stop. 

Steve still smiled at him over breakfast in the mornings and he still talked in the evenings, which was becoming a comforting part of their routine. Steve seemed, if not content, then at least comfortable in their holding pattern, which meant Bucky didn't feel guilty most of the time for holding him hostage in his routine. 

He liked it. Mostly. He liked to think they could continue on like this, and that Steve's wish to see the world was just a whim for adventure (the kind without guns, of course).

 

The main problem with this was that while Bucky was set adrift, and happy to be so, with Steve being his only link to the past, Steve had a modern life. He had been living in this decade since its first year, fully aware, and as is unavoidable in such a large period of time, he now knew people. He had people in his life apart from Bucky, and Bucky had honestly forgotten this. 

For all his talking, Steve didn't mention them, except for the one time Bucky had slipped up and asked about Peggy. 

Steve had looked so sad that night he'd kept plying him with tea until he'd smiled, which had only happened when Bucky had tried to refill a cup while Steve was in the middle of taking a sip.

 

It was Bucky's own fault he was surprised when he stepped outside on a drizzly morning to find Steve standing under the eaves on his phone. He'd seen the phone lying around, but it wasn't like he had a power grid to offer Steve in order to charge it, so he'd assumed he'd let it die. He'd been wrong, as it turned out. 

Steve had shot him a sharp look that quickly faded to embarrassed and chastised without faltering with the device he held to his ear. He mouthed sorry at Bucky, and when he spoke into the phone his voice was harder than Bucky had ever heard it. At least, directed at him.

 

"I told you. I'm fine. I needed the space. Yes, I know how long it's been. Look, I didn't say I'd be there. I'm sorry you're upset but- No, Sam. Forget it. We're- I'm good. Okay, I'll talk to you in a couple of weeks. Bye." 

Bucky knew he should have fled back inside, fussed around in the stall and pretended to be busy. Instead, he'd stood and watched the peculiar way Steve's mouth had twisted. 

Bucky thought he sounded angry, but Steve seemed to have been fighting a smile by the end. Steve hung up, and he pocketed the phone, that embarrassed little smile returning.

 

"Sorry. You remember Sam, right? He helped us. He likes to check in." Steve took a step toward the door, which was a step toward Bucky in what little cover there was from the rain. Bucky thought if he focused he might be able to hear Steve's heart beating, strong and patriotic.

 

"Sam's a dick," he replied, his way of saying that yes, he remembered Sam Wilson and he was pretty okay. They might not have become friends, but he was an easy ally. There had been something about him, a lack of fear and an easy attitude that had made him easy to fight beside.

 

Steve laughed and ran his hand back through his hair, and the gesture (plus the swinging elbow), made Bucky feel a bit crowded in. His breath caught.

 

"He just cares. He's been respecting my boundaries. Sam's all about that, but I can’t ignore him forever.” He seemed embarrassed by this, which came as a sharp reminder that not only did Steve have a life outside of this place, but he was putting it on hold to play farmer’s wife. 

Bucky felt himself going red and he stepped back, shoulder smacking into the door frame, but he didn’t wince. He was focused on Steve’s face because he looked serious now, but without the pinching he’d worn around his mouth while he’d been on the phone.

 

“He thinks I’m wasting my time, bothering you,” Steve added, voice pitched low. Bucky’s eyes widened when he realised, with only six inches between them as it was, Steve was on the approach. 

He couldn’t really be doing this, could he? 

He swallowed, watching with horror and longing as Steve studied his face, still moving at a glacial pace, and his eyes began to slip closed. 

Oh, God.

 

“Boundaries!” 

It came flying out of Bucky’s mouth sounding hysterical, and Steve’s eyes flew back open as Bucky scrambled to get free of the doorframe.

“Boundaries, Steve! Fuck. No.” 

He ducked past Steve, refusing to look at his face, and made a break for the side of the building so he could recover unseen. What was that? He took several long, shaky breaths and covered his face with his hands. Fuck. He was stupid.

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

Bucky hadn’t expected Steve to still be there after he’d fumbled whatever encounter Steve had tried to initiate and Bucky had fled for several hours just trying to breathe. He was still there, but unlike Bucky, he didn’t seem to be embarrassed. He was stormy.

 

Steve didn’t speak to Bucky the entire evening, except for one mumbled apology, which he imagined had only to do with Sam’s influence and not actual remorse for overstepping. 

He didn’t even explain what exactly it was that he was sorry for, which might have given Bucky a sense of what the hell had been about to happen. 

They sat in tense silence, but Bucky couldn’t take that for very long and he kept leaving to fuss with the animals. It was likely for the best anyway, as Strica was having one of his little rough nights where he kept snuffling about in his little bed when he should have been long asleep. 

 

Bucky bundled him up and sat with him on his lap, petting his little snout at turns. Having something so cute to tend to gave him a few minutes of mental reprieve as the hours passed. They were fleeting, but soothing, where he didn’t have to think about the man brooding over by the stove and what he might have ruined today. 

Bucky knew most of this wasn’t his fault. He could logically see that Steve needed to talk to him if he wanted them to be better, but he couldn’t help blaming himself as well. What would have happened if he’d just stayed put?

 

When Strica settled, not long after midnight, Bucky pulled himself up in silence and headed for the loft. 

He expected that he’d find Steve upstairs, but he had one foot on the ladder when he spotted the man in the corner, sleeping upright against the wall in Bucky’s spot. It might have been a comfort to assume that not all bridges had been burned, but sleeping on the floor in a spot where Bucky would sit was not nearly the same as sleeping in a warm bed next to him. 

He sighed and continued up the ladder.

 

***

 

Things did not improve. 

Strica became fussier and went off his food. Bucky blamed the general dark mood of the place for upsetting him. He’d taken to bringing Strica along on errands, tucked in his coat because he was afraid to leave him for too long. 

The others were struggling too. 

Pacoste didn’t bark inside the house as much and Mere had sided with Steve. She would spend every moment literally dogging his heels as he went about his day with more force than was ever necessary. Bucky felt he was about a day away from tearing down trees with his bare hands. 

Toca didn’t seem bothered, but then she was a calf and spent most of her time outside anyway now. If not for her aloofness, he’d be completely lost to the analogy that the kids were choosing sides while their parents fought.

 

Fighting would probably involve actually speaking to each other. As it was, they tended to just dance around one other. They continued to work on projects during the day, though with more separation. 

Steve had finished the pen outside, but he continued to improve upon it and Bucky would go out in the wooded areas to stock up on timber, though it was mostly for the stove now. He had also taken to going to the roadside stalls and into town on his own, except for Strica. 

He’d been getting sympathetic looks from one of the stallholders, but everyone else continued to treat him like he was a stranger and an odd one at that. Not be trusted. 

Steve would still make tea for them both, but he’d leave Bucky’s on the stove, which had resulted in more than two ruined cups. 

If it weren’t for the palpable tension, things hadn’t changed too much. That didn’t stop it from being the worst thing Bucky could imagine.

 

***

 

The worst thing he’d failed to imagine, in the end, happened in the middle of the night. 

The guilt wouldn’t dissipate for months afterward, that he’d managed to sleep through it. With Steve sleeping downstairs in his silent exile, he was the first to wake when Strica started to shriek. 

Pacoste soon followed, and all Bucky heard was the one warning bark before he’d rolled over into his mattress with his pillow over his head. He hadn’t heard anything that followed and he managed to miss all the upset. He knew he was safe with Steve downstairs. 

He had always thought that when something monumental happened, the people it involved would be able to feel something. The night Steve’s mother had died, frail in her sick bed but strength in her eyes to the last moment, Bucky had woken with a start in his bed and he swore he had just known.

 

He had no such premonition when he’d gotten up the next morning, expecting more of the same tension. Perhaps he wasn’t human enough anymore for that. 

Steve wasn’t indoors when he climbed down from the loft with Pacoste under his arm. He set the little dog down and Pacoste went running out the open door. He got together a bottle of formula for Strica and had it warming as he began to make himself some tea. 

He heard Steve come in but didn’t look up. What was the point? He kept working, heaping little scoops into the pot, and when he glanced to the stove he found that the bottle had been moved. 

Steve was standing by Bucky’s elbow and his shoulders were hunched in. He didn’t even get all the way to facing him before he heard the first shared words in days.

 

“I’m so sorry, Bucky.”

 

Steve sounded wrecked and, to Bucky’s horror, he found that his eyes were red as he looked up at the man’s face. 

Seeing Steve tear up wasn’t terribly uncommon when he thought about it. They’d been through so much and while Steve never actively cried, his face would go red and his eyes would shine whenever something truly traumatic occurred. 

With all they’d been through and the rather traumatic lives they’d lived together, he’d seen this expression before. Most recently, he’d seen it when Steve had told him the story of Peggy’s funeral, but Bucky had been too preoccupied with the guilt of realising he’d been so close by that if circumstances had been different, he might have even attended. 

These thoughts were shaken loose as he looked Steve over and realised he was holding the bottle, off the heat and letting it congeal inside.

 

“Steve?” He didn’t want to know. He didn’t. Whatever had made Steve look so fraught, he wanted nothing to do with it. 

The panic was rising in his chest, clawing up his throat and he didn’t want to put on a brave face and attack the problem like a soldier. This wasn’t fair. His home here was supposed to be void of such things. He was never supposed to see that expression again.

 

Steve’s eyes flicked to the door and Bucky went running. He staggered out the front door and saw it immediately. 

Even if Pacoste hadn’t been sitting by it, he’d have seen the difference in an instant. The rest of the land around them was lush and green, thanks to the rains. The only interruptions to the fields were caused by his own hand. 

He had not been the one to overturn the earth at the foot of the hill. That soft, fresh little mound of dirt had not been there yesterday.

 

***

 

The grief was too much. He didn’t need to ask Steve to know exactly which tiny member of his family was resting under the hill, but knowing did nothing to ease his panic. 

He stared, frozen with the cold creeping through his bones, at that tiny little grave and he could not bring himself to weep. It wasn’t fair, was the thought that permeated where all others failed. It just wasn’t fair.

 

Steve hadn’t followed him outside straight away. He’d let Bucky stand out there alone, only four paces from the house, for several minutes before he appeared in the doorway, the same one where their feud had started. 

Bucky didn’t react at first, but when he heard Steve take another step out the door he whirled on him. He wanted to lash out, to shove Steve or corner him against the door with his arm to his throat, but he didn’t do that anymore. Even now. Shouting though, that was different.

 

“Why didn’t you wake me?!” He bellowed, metallic fist clenching by his side. 

He hadn’t put on his gloves yet. It reflected in the early light onto the grass. Steve wasn’t hunched over anymore. He was standing tall, squared for a fight. His face didn’t look any less dismal though.

 

“There was nothing to be done. Bucky, it happened so fast. I’m sorry.” 

Steve sounded cut up about it, to his credit, as if getting the words out involved several stages of talking around broken glass.

 

“I could have helped him! He needed me! You had fucking time to bury him! He was hanging on. Steve, what did you do to him?” 

Although still shouting, his question broke off on an unintended sound. A sob, bursting from deep within his throat. He could feel it now, the loss of control as he struggled to hold on. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to be crying in earnest soon, but he was so angry he couldn’t harness himself. 

He didn’t understand at first why Steve looked so angry in return.

 

“What did I do? You think I hurt him? You really think I’d do that? Fuck you, Buck.” Steve stared Bucky down, teeth grinding with his glare before he turned on his heel back inside and slammed the door. 

Bucky hadn’t heard Steve swear since he’d arrived. He used to swear all the time, but he had thought that something about the expectations of this century had taken it out of him. 

He’d been caught on this and the anger and the fear, so he hadn’t noticed at first that the force of slamming the door had burst one of the windows. Who knows what damage it had done inside. 

 

Pacoste had yelped and come running back at the sound, having left his guard post by the grave, and Bucky had to turn on reflex to scoop him up to keep him from treading on the broken glass scattered by the door. 

This movement took the fight right out of him and he slumped to his knees as his little mutt tried to nuzzle his face. 

From his place on the earth, he could hear the back door close (more gently this time), but he couldn’t see Steve until he had marched halfway up the hill with a large bag Bucky had never seen before slung over his shoulder. 

Steve didn’t turn around once and he disappeared over the hill long before Bucky could get back on his feet.

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

The house was too quiet now. It wasn’t just the absence of Steve that he noticed but the severed connections with his animals. He could see the burial mound from his window when he sat to eat his meals, so he’d moved the table so all he could look at was the wall. 

Toca still preferred to stay outside except for cool nights and he supposed that would be the status quo now that she was growing up and no longer needed any specific care. Mere wouldn’t come near him, but then he’d expected that for the way she’d taken immediately to Steve. She would interact with Pacoste at least, so he didn’t have to worry about her being lonely. 

Pacoste was the only one still interacting with him, but Bucky was bad company and wasn’t in the mood to spout Romanian at him while they worked, so he really only saw the dog at night.

 

Personal trauma felt like something he could handle these days. Being hated was just what it was, and while he ached, it was a familiar enough feeling. 

The thing that he struggled with most was how his perception of home had changed. There was no doubting that this place was his home now and yet all the light seemed to have gone out of the place. 

Even though summer was fast approaching, where he had once seen lush full hills of green and the beautiful quaintness of his home, he now saw a tacky shed on a bleak field. 

 

All of the tender warmth he’d pushed into the foundations with his endless odd jobs and projects seemed to have slipped away in the night. He no longer found great comfort under his blankets or in his first cup of tea for the day. 

He felt, rather surprisingly as it was a long-forgotten sensation, like a Brooklyn boy out of his depth. What was he doing in rural Romania, of all places, and why had he thought it could work?

 

Perhaps the lowest moment was when he had gone to get some vegetables for a stew. 

There were stalls a closer walk than this one, but the lady who worked there, who always seemed to be wrapped up and cold even on the warmest days, was his favourite. She wasn’t chatty, and she didn’t seem bothered to get his life story or even extended pleasantries out of him. And more often than not, he could get his regular purchases done with only please and thank yous. She had been the one to pass sympathetic glances his way and she had taken to keeping a stock of stale oats on hand so he could make the gruel formula for Strica.

 

This time, she had pulled out the pail as usual and he’d begrudgingly told her that it wouldn’t be necessary. She took a real look at his face in that moment, and then to his horror she’d begun to cry. Her eyes had glistened and then she’d hurried forward and embraced him. 

He’d tensed and he felt keenly the moment her hand squeezed on his metal arm. It might have looked real hidden under his jacket and gloves, but he knew for certain it didn’t feel real. 

She’d drawn back in fear and stared at him. He’d been stricken, but he left her more money than he owed and turned on his heel to hurry away. The fear of being discovered hadn’t lasted long. Let them find him. What did he have that mattered now anyway?

 

No one came. Life continued on.

 

He had intended to avoid that stall from now on, and he’d successfully dodged it on his way down the road by approaching the road from a different angle, but it had never occurred to him that stallholders would talk. 

There was a car already pulled up at the other stand when he arrived, an old beaten up hatchback, and a woman, all wrapped up, was having a serious-sounding conversation about their families using Skype while helping the stallholder move crates of fruit from the trunk. It didn’t mesh at all with the mental image he’d had of these women. 

They were clearly impoverished, but he’d been working under the mistaken assumption that they lived their lives without technology, and even the car seemed odd to him. He chastised himself silently for his misunderstanding of poverty as he ran his thumb over the stem of an apple.

 

He heard a gasp and dropped it back into the barrel. The women had turned to him and he realised too late that the second woman was his sympathetic vegetable seller. She was staring at him, but he felt less on edge when she began to smile.

 

“ _You! Sweet piglet boy. I have something for you. Come._ ” She spoke slowly as if he couldn’t understand her, and the younger woman sorting out her crates began to laugh into her shoulder. 

Bucky looked to her for clues but getting none he hesitantly rounded the car to meet the lady by the back door. She looked so different with a smile on her face, and he realised that while he’d always thought of her as nearing sixty, she was likely fifteen years younger than that. He’d never bothered to study their faces. 

She pulled out a small bucket and passed it to him. It had feed in it and he began to push it back toward her.

 

“Nu. Mulțumesc. Nu.” He didn’t have anyone to feed this to anymore and he thought she’d known that. She was still leaning over her backseat and she turned her head to give him a frown before heaving an open crate out of the back, lined with blankets.

 

“ _It’s for her._ ” 

She was smiling again as she set the crate on the ground and lifted out a perfect, pink piglet. Bucky stared at it, unmoving, but the woman had other ideas and was quickly settling the baby pig into his arms. 

His first thought was one of longing for his old friend, but while Strica had been an innocent creature too, he’d been a wild pig. Good for hunting, perhaps, but belonging to no one. His Romanian should have been rusty, but it wasn’t, and he began babbling.

 

“ _No. I can’t take her. She’s valuable to you. I mean, she’s good stock. I can’t take this from you, I’m not going to sell it. I’m not going to eat it. You can’t give me this._ ” 

He could hardly take a healthy animal from a woman selling carrots from the side of the road to get by. This little creature, as sweet as it was, had real value and he felt real guilt at the thought of taking it away not for breeding or meat or sale value, but as a pet. He tried to pass her back the animal, but he was laughed at for his trouble.

 

“ _Keep it,_ dragă. _It might make you happy again_.”

 

And that was how he got Impostură ( _imposition_ ), although he mostly called her Imp. She was cute, and most importantly she was healthy, but she wasn’t a magic balm for his troubles, just a welcome distraction. 

He didn’t want her sleeping where Strica had, so he reverted his storage area into a second stall, and just like that he had new projects. It helped while the sun shone, but the nights remained troublesome.

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

He wound up thinking about Steve a lot. 

It hurt less when he was busy, so he went back to his old routine of list making and meticulous repairs. He’d noticed things that hadn’t bothered him on his own that seemed embarrassing with an outsider’s point of view. 

The bathroom became an actual bathroom as a result of this, not just a showerhead next to the basin. It was haphazard and it required buying a few more tools, but it was an improvement. He kept up on these little projects and he would allow his mind to wander. 

Most of the time, he tried to figure out what would have happened if he hadn’t fled from the doorway in the rain. What would have happened if he hadn’t squawked about boundaries and let whatever was happening happen? The thought kept him up nights.

 

Steve had never done anything untoward during the visit. There were no clues to scope out, no secret smiles to puzzle over. He knew this and yet he mapped out every detail in his memory as if the answer was there if he just looked at it the right way. 

Ultimately, it seemed easier to just assume Steve had been trying to go inside, even if it didn’t explain the ensuing sulking. Easier in theory, at least. Not thinking about it at all was the greatest challenge of his simple little life.

 

***

 

He didn’t see his next visitor approach at all. There had been no engines to be heard and no figure on the horizon. She had simply knocked on the door one day, as if he were a neighbour and not living in a purposefully remote location. 

She looked discreet, her jeans distressed and her sweater seeming a bit warm for the time of year. She still had those black nails, which Bucky noticed when he finally opened the door and let his eyes track her face and then the big envelope in her hands.

 

“It’s polite to invite visitors in. Especially when they bring you presents. Steve said you have tea.” 

She had the slightest hint of a smile, and if she were being sent on an errand, he was glad it was she and not the Black Widow. While he had no idea if she spoke the language, he was sure her accent would have helped her fit in if she’d travelled the regular way to the area. 

Sarkovia hadn’t been far from here, when he thought about it. He hadn’t given it any thought, as it turned out.

 

He’d let her in and put the kettle on because if she’d been talking to Steve then she already knew about this place. To her credit, she didn’t seem to be trying to make friends or gather intel. She took in the room, but he noticed the way she didn’t immediately check the exits with her scan. It was kind of a comfort that she hadn’t been trained for this. Whatever this was.

 

He put the mug down in front of her when she sat the table and he stood by the stove, waiting. She took a sip, made a little face, and set the envelope flat on the table.

 

“He was going to come himself, you know. This was always the plan, but he won’t say why he changed his mind. He bought this place.” She narrowed her eyes when Bucky tensed and his mouth dropped open. He wasn’t quite used to not giving anything away anymore, although he’d never been a spy.

 

“Don’t stress. Really, I should say that you bought this place. The land, anyway. It’s in your name. Or, not really. I tried understanding it but with all the shell corporations I think the point is that no one can take it from you. No one is coming back for this place.” 

She gave him a smile, but it seemed pretty obvious she didn’t think this was necessary. Her eyes drifted again and he could have sworn she was thinking that no one would want it.

 

She went back to her tea, politely drinking it all as Bucky made his slow approach and took the envelope. 

He leafed through it, planning to study it in detail later, but the important information came on the page with the plan of the boundaries. He owned the hill, the field, and a significant portion of the woodland. 

This meant, he realised with a jolt, that he could protect it. He could make sure his land was free from traps and keep it that way. He had barely said two words to Wanda, and she didn’t seem to notice. 

She set her mug down and got to her feet.

 

“It’s a nice place. My brother would have liked it, I think. All that land.”

 

She made her departure after that and Bucky knew he should have been uncomfortable with her knowing where he lived, but he didn’t think of her as a threat, as odd as her powers were. Steve really seemed to trust her and she was just a kid.

 

***

 

Having the land in his name changed things. His projects began to get larger and he began to sincerely regret not telling Wanda to pass on a message to Steve. 

He’d been thinking about something he’d said, a story of a past mission where his team had wound up in a farmhouse with a friend. He’d kept the story vague but he knew the story was recent. He’d started to try to imagine what it would be like to have a visitor. He didn’t have friends, but Steve did and this place was not welcoming to more than one guest at a time. 

He started with chairs, and that project stretched on so long he gave up after three and began building on an extension. For such a large concept, it didn’t take him very long to get it set up. It wasn’t fancy, just a bunkroom that was accessed externally, but he was able to put it together before the equinox. He even had help. Although he wanted to keep his privacy, he was no longer squatting, which meant he could safely hire help.

 

In the end, he’d had to buy a phone in order to field the calls about jobs and sometimes the talking made him itch, but the results were great. It took a little bit of frustration, but he was able to get set up for solar power and now that he wasn’t doing everything alone he could have actual wiring and better plumbing. 

He avoided a lot of the paperwork and he was certain his place probably wasn’t up to code, but now at least he had a smoke detector and even a refrigerator. 

 

Deliveries were still a hassle since his house had no access road, but he managed. The real revelation was that he was managing well. 

When he wasn’t tinkering, he would go out into the woods with Pacoste and search for traps. They cleared out a few and he would methodically take them apart to reuse the metal, mostly as decoration on the pen outside.

 

He hadn’t realised how much he must have visibly improved until the evening where he’d been telling Pacoste about their plans for the next day but discovered his mutt was asleep, when Mere had padded over and dropped her considerable heft down across his lap.

 

“You want to come too? Okay. You can come,” he’d told her as he began to scratch her belly. Whatever she’d been waiting for, he’d finally gotten her seal of approval and he relished it. He didn’t take the honour lightly and after a few minutes, he hesitantly began a new story. In English.

 

“This one time, Steve and I, we decided to try to find a bar in the middle of Austria…”

 

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

 

Bucky was spectacular in how long it took him to realise what he now had at his disposal. As things continued to improve from his hard work and he began to let his idle thoughts about Steve take on a more positive tone, he failed to realise how easy it would be to reach out. He had a phone now. He wasn’t scared of what that meant anymore, thanks to the security of ownership. 

The more stories he told his captive four-legged audience about his adventures with Captain Ridiculous, the more he wanted to reach out, to find out what would have happened in that doorway. He even let himself start to believe the delusion that he could handle a rejection at this point.

 

To make himself feel more secure in this, he reasoned that he’d feel better if he bought chickens. He ended up with two and they chirped a lot and liked to hang around Imp. He couldn’t get over how cute they were and he carried a lot of anxiety about accidentally squishing them, or something else bad happening, so he became mother hen and fretted after them long enough to procrastinate for another two weeks. 

The days were hot now and he didn’t like to be in full sun for too long if he could help it. Metal heated fast, after all. He hadn’t expected it to get so hot out there, but the temperature steadily climbed as summer continued.

 

It took him a day to actually track down the page with the phone numbers on it when he did decide it was time. He went through his backpack twice and the rest of the house once before he found it scrunched up in a back pocket, crumbled but legible. 

T’Challa had given him lots of numbers, plenty of people to contact and he hadn’t given any of them a second thought. He hadn’t even gotten around to turning it over and reading it in full. 

It had come as a small surprise to know he had the numbers not only for relevant embassies, T’Challa’s people and Steve, but of everyone who had been on his side in that damn airport. 

 

He didn’t know why he’d want to contact them unless it had something to do with tracking Steve down. It seemed ridiculously unwise to have all those wanted people on one page. Maybe if he wanted to speak to Steve, he’d have to call a number of his friends to trace him. Maybe it would be better to pass along the message than to try to speak it to him.

 

It was a little anti-climatic then when he called the number printed under Steve Rogers on his sheet and had the man himself answer. Which, really, of course he did. It had been stupid to expect otherwise.

 

“Yes?”

 

Bucky’s breath caught for a moment, but he recognised the voice, of course. He thought Steve was still angry, but then he remembered that Steve had no idea he had a phone. He didn’t have magic caller ID, though perhaps he might have if Bucky’s name was listed.

 

“Hi.” The polite thing would be to identify himself. Hi, it’s Bucky. How are you? He didn’t allow himself to elaborate though and he sighed into the phone, which is when the silence ended.

 

“Bucky. Hi. Is everything…” Steve trailed off and he sounded perhaps as breathless as Bucky felt. How was he supposed to answer that, anyway? What he wanted to say didn't seem to have words. He just wanted to project a feeling down the phone at Steve. 

How did you offer an apology without apologising and ask for something without knowing what it was he really wanted? It didn't make any sense so Bucky floundered and was silent. 

Steve didn't push. He seemed as lost as Bucky and just as eager to speak without speaking. Eventually, even without the answers, Bucky couldn't take it any longer.

 

“ _Steve_." He sounded weak, he was sure. He had keened out his name like a plea for a lifeline, a frustrated pathetic sound that he didn't even get an opportunity to regret before Steve was responding.

 

" _Buck_. Okay. I'll be there tomorrow. No, the day after, but I'm coming, okay?" Bucky nodded to this, forgetting himself. 

Steve had heard something he'd been looking for, it seemed, but Bucky wasn't sure what it was, just that it was good. It was what he wanted, for Steve to return, if nothing else.

 

"Okay," he replied, making an effort to keep his voice steady and aloof. 

Steve was coming back and they'd sort the rest out later. Whatever that was. 

They lapsed back into their silence and it stretched on for several minutes. He could hear Steve breathing, faster than he should have been, and Bucky wondered if his elevated heartbeat was audible too. All too soon he heard shifting on the line.

 

"I've got to go. I'll see you soon, Buck."

 

***

 

 

 

Bucky had a feeling Steve had to cancel a lot to come immediately, so he wasn't surprised that he didn't arrive in two days as he'd promised, but the text message that came instead was a shock.

 

_I'm so sorry. I'll be there tomorrow, definitely. -Steve_

 

The message had taken the guesswork out of the visits and it came as a relief. The tension in his shoulders lessened and he began to let himself daydream about what could be to come. If Steve was going to visit more often, then he could let him know whenever he was headed his way, or Bucky could perhaps even tell him if it wasn't a good time. 

It suggested a freedom and a future he could wrap his head around. It gave him a hopeful little calm that lasted well into the next day.

 

It was a Tuesday and the stifling heat had been lessened by a gentle breeze. The sun still had its usual sting, so he'd opened up the barn door and settled inside by the pen and let the breeze wash over him as he waited. 

He still wore a longer sleeve, but he'd pushed up the sleeves and cuffed his jeans to keep cool. He'd washed his hair and had made an effort to look nice, but he had dust on his pants now from sitting on the ground. 

 

He'd had all his animals around him, Imp snoozing beside him while the chicks pecked at the dirt around his snout. Toca had been avoiding the sun and Mere had been standing guard next to him. 

He wasn't nearly as rattled as he should feel, under the circumstances. Things felt lighter, with the breeze and his friends and the beautiful view of rolling hills and so much fresh, green grass.

 

The view managed to improve when he saw the arrival. Rather than coming from the hill as Bucky might have expected, which would have required perching in his loft to keep an eye out, Steve approached from the direction of the mountains. 

He was dressed nicely, nicer than he had originally. While functional and professional, his light jacket was doing things to his strong shoulders that Bucky highly approved of and it left him a bit breathless. 

 

Before he could rise, Pacoste was darting out from wherever he'd been snooping, appearing in view from around the corner as he barrelled up to Steve. 

Bucky watched on as Steve, who had been standing tall, grinned and stooped low to pet the mutt. Evidently feeling left out, Mere barked at the pair but didn't move from Bucky's side. It was her low warning not to forget about her, even if she wasn't about to brave the heat with her thick golden fur.

 

This drew Steve's face up and Bucky could have sworn they locked eyes. Steve began to move quickly, forgetting Pacoste and striding out over the grass to the barn. 

Bucky stood, but Steve didn't appear to be looking straight at him anymore. It wasn't until Steve stepped into the shadow and began to blink that he sheepishly remembered that he wouldn't have been visible in the shade from out in the blaring sunlight. Steve's eyes adjusted quickly and his gaze snapped to Bucky and the wind was knocked out of him. 

No, they'd definitely not locked eyes like this before, because the look on Steve's face was completely different. He was determined again, but his eyes crinkled in the start of a smile.

 

Bucky took a breath and tugged on his rolled up sleeve in a nervous and unnecessary gesture.

 

"Hi." It was Bucky that spoke first, but they were almost in sync, Steve shutting his mouth and grinning just a half-second after Bucky. 

Why had he been so hesitant before, he wondered, when Steve had clearly always been here just for him? 

He hadn't been ready then, but he could see it now, that regardless of how their longings might differ, they both needed each other.

 

Falling into the lightness in his heart, he threw himself forward and into Steve's solid chest. They had done this before, always been all over each other for hugs and support. It was home. 

Bucky clung on, feeling Steve's chest shake under him. This was home. Steve smelled of soap and a little of sweat so Bucky closed his eyes and forgot not to be obvious about breathing him in. Steve was home.

 

Two minutes drifted past and he began to step backward, hesitant now, but Steve caught him. He didn't get more than an inch away before Steve was cupping his face in one of his hands and dragging him in for a kiss that Bucky had been certain would never occur. Not in a million years, or not in a hundred at least. 

If he were a weaker man, a regular man, his knees might have buckled. Instead, he pushed back, struggling if only to make it last longer, to make Steve push harder. There was no need to grapple, but it was perfect all the same. 

 

It was Steve who ended the kiss, pulling back with a gasp though Bucky was sure breathing was not the issue. He watched in awe as Steve opened his eyes and with it, his expression bloomed into a look of joy and unbridled love, a look so candid and undone that Bucky wondered who on earth he'd been looking at all these years. 

This was a Steve he'd never seen before, not in his entirety, which tempted him to attempt to kiss him again and discover just what else had been hidden away in his soul. For the first time in a century, he felt certain that there would be time for that later. 

They were home.

 

 

 

 

 

**Epilogue**

 

Things didn’t fall into place immediately, but once a thoroughly kissed Steve had seen the new bunkhouse addition in full and made good use of it with Bucky, the plan started to appear, piece by piece. More important than Bucky’s bizarre little dream of being a safe house for the retired vigilante set was the way Steve settled so effortlessly into his home. 

He didn’t actually live there, as he finally revealed he had been staying with Wanda and Sam in Slovenia, a place the United States was completely uninterested in but turned out to be some sort of haven for good people and excellent social structures. 

Steve seemed quietly proud of the place, as if he’d invented it himself. It was not a place that had existed in their time, so perhaps Captain America had lent some influence over its current stability. Who would know?

 

It seemed better for them both that Steve not move in completely. Bucky still liked his space but didn't mind when Steve chose to stay for weeks at a time. It didn't take long for them to have their first official visitor. 

Bucky somehow doubted that the people of Wakanda knew that their king had stayed a weekend in a dilapidated barn on the outskirts of Bacau, but T'Challa had been a gracious guest. 

He had been pleased to see Bucky doing so well and had brought a chess board, wooden this time, so that they could have long lapses in their conversations without a moment of awkwardness. Well, presenting a king with a bunkroom had been a tad uncomfortable, but T'Challa was a warrior and didn't seem to mind.

 

After the first visitor came others, friends of Steve's who needed a break from whatever projects, though mostly he thought they were on the run. The Ant-Man came only the once, but there were several brief stopovers by a cold but gracious Natasha. Bucky tended to prefer to keep out of her way. 

Bucky really just wanted them to have their room without bothering them. It was comfortable. Sam came to visit a few times and immediately took to Toca, though he insisted on referring to her as 'milk dog'. All of the animals liked him. 

 

At Steve's gentle suggestion, Bucky was persuaded to leave their friend (for he was both of their friends now, it seemed) in charge of the farm for two days so that Steve could show Bucky his apartment in Slovenia. 

One trip turned into two and the distances increased. Through gentle prodding and Bucky's surprising discovery of actually enjoying the anonymity of tourism, Steve managed to take Bucky all over Europe. 

They never strayed further east, but they did see a lot of the countryside, where fake passports and more discreet methods of transport were required.

 

It was a freedom Bucky had never felt before, being unconstrained by budget, politics or war, and allowed more or less to roam free. They kept their heads down and yet they saw so much of the world. 

They hid only their identities, but did not in any way have to hide who they were to one another. 

That was the change that Steve had wanted to see the most, not the towers and landscapes and museums, but to see those things together with their hands intertwined. 

None of it was perfect. There was much to work on both personally and within the world, but Bucky was so grateful now for what he had, these special things that he would always treasure.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Comments are love. Come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://that-thing-you-roo.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
